Immutability
by Lucillia
Summary: Fate always found a way. Even if Kakarot died before leaving Planet Vegeta, there always would be a Son Goku grandson to Son Gohan to protect Earth. These are the stories of those who filled the role Kakarot would have had before Chance interfered.
1. Part One: The Hero's New Name

These are the stories of Son Goku. These aren't the story of young Kakarot being sent to Earth where he grows up to be Earth's greatest protector. These are the stories of Son Goku after Chance interfered with Fate's plan.

Fate always finds a way. Even if Kakarot died on Vegeta, there would always be a protector of Earth and seeker of Dragonballs named Son Goku. No matter who filled the role, or how wildly different their life was, Son Goku would save the world from all who would threaten it.

These are the stories of those who filled the role after the demise of Kakarot.

Beyond this page is the first part of their tales, the day they were given and accepted the name of the protector of Earth.


	2. Sun Wukong

He almost hadn't cared when his planet had been destroyed. Things like that happened all the time, this time it was his planet instead of someone else's. The only thing that bothered him about Vegeta's destruction was the indignity of a great warrior race being all but wiped out by a giant space rock. It was the whispers that bothered him. The whispers, the stares, and the comments about how the Saiyans couldn't have been all that tough since they had all been wiped out by a giant rock. Getting condescending looks from even the lowliest of Frieza's troops angered him. He was the elite of the elites, who were they to look at him like that?

Less than six months after the destruction of the world his people called home, things came to a head. In an attempt to prove his greatness and gain the status he felt he deserved, he had challenged one of Frieza's lieutenants - a feminine looking green alien called Zarbon - to a fight. He discovered the hard way that he wasn't anywhere near as strong as he believed himself to be when Zarbon had beaten him to within an inch of his life. As he lay there bleeding to death, Zarbon whispered the truth about the fate of his homeworld in his ear before leaving him to make his own way to the regen tanks.

Instead of making his way to the ship's medical bay, he had dragged himself inch by bloody inch towards the pods that were used to send soldiers out on clearing missions. There was no way in hell that he would remain in the service of the monster who had destroyed Vegeta. He climbed into one of the pods and set the most remote destination he could think of. As he entered stasis, a small part of him prayed that he would never wake up.

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Son Gohan sat on his roof stargazing with a bottle of sake at his side when he saw the shooting star. Raising the bottle to his lips, he silently wished that he had taken the time to have a family to continue his name instead of having devoted his entire life to martial arts. The recent birth of the Ox King's daughter Chi-Chi had begun to put his life into perspective, and he hadn't entirely liked what he saw. Instead of being surrounded by friends and family as he should be at his age, he was living alone on an isolated mountain.

A sonic boom shook his house as the "meteor" he had been watching passed by overhead before smashing into a mountain a couple of miles away. Curious - and having nothing else to do - he decided to investigate. He found the crater the object's impact had made easily enough after reaching the center of a large ring of broken trees. Inside the crater was a gunmetal gray spherical object. Sticking half-way out of the object was a small, unconscious boy who couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old. Racing down the side of the crater, he went to examine the child. The boy was so badly injured that he was amazed that he was alive. Just about everything in the human body that could be broken had been broken, and blood was seeping out of at least a dozen wounds. Praying to every deity he could think of for the child not to die on him, he made a litter out of broken tree branches and dragged him home.

Because there were no hospitals for nearly a hundred miles in any direction, it was up to him to use what medical knowledge he had to heal the boy with the furry brown tail who he had decided to adopt as his grandson and name Son Goku. He was glad the child was unconscious when he set his broken bones because, if he were awake the pain would be nearly unbearable. He was gently treating the boy's numerous cuts, burns and abrasions when he came to, practically unable to move and angry at his helplessness.

Over the next few weeks - to help distract the boy from his pain and the tedium of lying there unable to do anything - he told the child every story he could think of, from the ancient tales that his own grandfather had told him as a child to things he had read in the magazines he had purchased when he was last in town several years ago. The child simply lay there - his head turned away - apparently ignoring him but, every once in a while the boy's ears perked up letting him know that despite his attitude he was actually listening.

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Being helpless and at the mercy of a weakling had been humiliating. For weeks he had been unable to move, and forced to listen as some old alien talked for days on end while tending to his wounds. He had not yet killed the old alien as he was still of some use to him. While he could now move, it was only for a short distance and he could not yet forage for food. The old alien dealt with that task instead.

He now sat in the middle of the clearing that surrounded the house and small shrine eating a large bowl of soup that consisted of some kind of meat and noodles that the alien had given him with a smile and a comment about growing boys and large appetites. As he ate, he contemplated the two stories from his convalescence that had stuck most in his mind. One was the tale of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King whom the old man had decided to name him after - showing him how the characters of his new name could be pronounced differently depending on the usage or the language - and the other was a tale of a young prince who had been cast out of his kingdom by an evil sorcerer. This prince - knowing that he could not yet defeat the sorcerer - had gone into hiding. Disguising himself as a peasant, he traveled the world learning everything he could until one day he had been strong enough to kill the sorcerer and take back his kingdom.

Even though his kingdom was destroyed, he was a prince in hiding just as the boy in the old man's tale had been. Until the day he was strong enough to avenge his people by destroying Frieza and rightfully be deserving of his birth name and his crown, he would be Son Goku. It didn't matter that the old man had selected the name as a joke after noticing his tail. After all, the one who had the name before him had gained immortality, defeated Heaven's greatest warriors and became an equal to the gods themselves.


	3. Peach Thief

Son Gohan sighed as he packed some of his belongings. Staying here day in and day out, following the same routine had gotten boring. He had finally decided to take an extended vacation and walk to a temple of fighting monks that was a couple thousand miles away. Training with them for a few years would be a nice change of pace.

After walking for several weeks, he arrived at the Orinji temple. After speaking with the head monk of the temple - with whom he had been corresponding for a while - he decided to explore the grounds. During his wandering, he came across a group of boys picking on a much smaller child. After wading in and rescuing the boy, he reported the older boys' behavior to one of the senior monks in the temple.

Over the next several months he grew fond of the boy called Krillin, seeing him as the child he never had. One day, he inquired as to the boy's origins and discovered that the now six year-old boy had been brought to the temple after being orphaned when he was two. A few months later, after coming to a decision he never thought he would make - especially this late in life - he went home with his newly adopted grandson.

When they left the temple, he asked the boy if he wanted a new name to go with his new life and the child had said yes. For two weeks, he watched the boy trying to think of a name that would suit him. On the day he was about to give up, he watched as the boy snuck into a nearby fruit orchard and started stealing peaches out of one of the trees. Normally this would've been something he would have simply scolded the child for and quickly forgotten but, for some strange reason it reminded him of a story he had read long ago. As he walked along the road with the boy at his side hours later, he realized that he had found the child's name.

"You are Son Goku." He told the boy as he tucked him into a bed at an inn that night.


	4. Immortal Warrior

King Vegeta stared down at the madman who had been forced to his knees in front of him. He had been raving for the past three days since he had left the regen tank after being injured on a mission to Kanassa. Oddly enough, people were actually listening to him. The spreading rumors of a child who had been killed because he'd been born with an impossibly high power level were adding to their belief.

The man had been raving since he had seen his pathetically low powered son killed before him after King Vegeta had ordered that all infants born with a power level less than twenty-five be treated as a waste of resources and dealt with accordingly. Hours earlier, Paragus' son - a child named Broly - had been killed on his orders for being born with a power level of over eight-thousand. The two infants had somehow become one when the man named Bardock had been dragged from the medcenter by a sizable team of rather battered elites screaming about how his son was supposed to grow up to defeat Frieza and avenge Vegeta's destruction shortly after the rumors of the death of an extremely high powered infant began to make its rounds.

On the first day of Bardock's raving about how the planet was going to be destroyed nobody believed him, until one of the doctors who had a side hobby of studying aliens with psychic abilities started telling his colleagues about the report of an unexplainable change in his brainwaves and how it was possible he was seeing the future. The story spread from there. People had heard stories of the strange powers that the Kanassans supposedly had, and tales of people who had traveled to Kanassa and come back different.

The fact that Frieza had destroyed planets that displeased him before, and the fact that several Saiyan planet clearing teams had mysteriously vanished recently added to the general unease. High-level soldiers and elites were quietly bribing flight-control to add extra planet clearing missions to send their small children on, further adding to the panic.

Vegeta had to do something to stem the rising panic. Killing the madman before him would only make the people truly believe that there was actually something to his story. After thinking the problem over for a while, he came up with what he decided was the best solution. He sent the man on a clearing mission to one of the most remote planets in on the list. A planet that, ironically, the man's deceased son had been scheduled to clear. With Bardock gone, the panic would eventually die down.

Moments after the pod carrying the unconscious Bardock left the system, Frieza's ship entered it. As the planet Vegeta was destroyed, King Vegeta's last thought was "I should have never issued that edict."

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Bardock awoke to a hot sun beating down on him and a terrible thirst. He considered staying where he was until he died since there was nothing left for him, but his thirst finally got to him. He got up and went in search of water. After hours of searching, he heard some flowing nearby. When he reached the source, he found it to be a small stream bubbling up from between two rocks. He drank greedily, not noticing anything amiss until he started shrinking. When he stopped, he looked down at himself and expressed his displeasure at the way his life had turned out in a way he hadn't since he was last that size. He started to cry.

Suddenly, he was covered by a shadow. He turned to face the threat that was behind him, falling backward in the process. Standing above him was a white-furred alien with pointed ears. Its fangs gleamed in the sunlight as it grinned down at him. It stood in the universal "I come in peace" pose though. He relaxed only slightly at this, and held back the attack he had prepared.

"I see that you have found the fountain of youth, little warrior." the alien said chuckling. "I don't know why, but everyone always takes too much. I must inform you that the only way to get back to where you were, is to wait however many years it takes to age to that point naturally. Fortunately for you, I know someone who will be willing to take you in until you reach adulthood."

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Bardock ripped off the "diaper" thing that the old man that the alien had given him to had put on him before crawling out of the house as fast as his little limbs could carry him. Being on this mountain that was practically covered in food was far better than being in that desert, and made it easier to take care of himself in his new form but, there was no way in hell that he was going to allow some old guy to treat him like a baby.

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Fate smiled as she pulled the thread that caused Bardock to fall off of a cliff and into the pool of forgetfulness that appeared for only ten minutes once every hundred years. This was technically cheating, but she wouldn't allow Chance to ruin the pattern she was weaving. Pulling another thread into place, she had Son Gohan find young Bardock happily playing in the mud where the now dried up pool had once been.


	5. A Stone From Heaven

Son Gohan had been cooking dinner when the giant egg came out of the sky and crashed through his roof. If he hadn't broken his leg falling into that ravine he would have joined the battle that was taking place hundreds of miles away, instead he had spent most of the day worrying about his former teacher and his students who had joined the Crane Hermit and his students in the fight against the Great Demon King Piccolo. As the sun began to set, he finally decided that since there was nothing he could do, he may as well take care of his own needs.

Not knowing what kind of creature could have produced such an egg, he began to examine it from every angle. It was as hard as a rock, and colored like a rock. He was beginning to believe that it was a rock that had probably been dropped by a Petrodactyl when it began to hatch. Inside was a green baby with pointed ears and antennae.

He smiled ruefully, it seemed that Kami-Sama had answered his prayers a few decades later than he had hoped.

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Piccolo, the son of Piccolo tore off the diaper that the lame old man had put on him before setting fire to his house. The old man might survive if he woke up in time. Grinning as he made his way through the woods, he thought otherwise.

Over the next few weeks he made his way down from the mountains and into a vast and sparsely populated forest. As he passed by one dwelling, he heard the sounds of a celebration. Curious, he had looked inside. While he watched the family at the table celebrating the birthday of a child who was only a little larger than him a jealous anger rose and swelled within him. He took great satisfaction in destroying the child's birthday cake and present after he broke the window, causing the family to go outside.

The satisfaction was short lived though, after he had run out of the back door he was chased by the father and a large dog. While he blasted the dog away from him with a power he didn't know he had, the man shot him with the shotgun he had been carrying. The pain was intense. The man re-loaded his shotgun as he approached him. The instant before the man reached him, the lame old man he had abandoned in his burning home stepped out from between the trees.

"I see you have found my grandson. I apologize for any damage he may have caused." the old man said as he stepped between him and the man with the gun and reached into his pocket. "I will be happy to provide restitution for any destroyed property."

After paying the man, the old man picked him up while muttering something about a magazine fund, and carried him a short distance away to a clearing where he set up a capsule house. The old man carried him inside and began to tend to his wound.

"Jealousy is a dangerous emotion little one, it causes more harm for the person who lets it enter their heart than good." the old man said shaking his head.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what little one?" the old man replied.

"Why did you save me after I tried to kill you?" he asked.

"Kami-Sama sent you to me for a reason little one, I couldn't let you die." the old man said.

After the old man finished bandaging his injury, he gently carried him to the capsule house's bedroom and tucked him into the bed.

"Would you like me to tell you a story?" the old man asked once he had finished.

"Yes." he replied, not understanding the feeling that had risen in him when the old man had tucked him in.

"A long time ago, on the mountain of flowers and fruit..."


	6. A Babe in the Woods

Broly quietly cried as the nursery attendants taunted him for crying. He briefly heard his father's voice, then one of the attendants approached. He curled himself in a ball waiting to be picked on some more. Instead, the attendant picked him up and placed him with Kakarot who was the reason he had been crying in the first place. Before he could reach over and punch the annoyance in the eye, the nursery attendant picked him up.

"Sorry buddy, but this just isn't your day." the attendant said before clipping Kakarot's hair and setting him in the bassinet that he had just occupied minutes earlier.

A few minutes after he was placed in the bassinet that still strongly smelled of Kakarot, one of the royal guard walked in, stalked over to his former bassinet, picked Kakarot up, stabbed him through the heart, and carried his body off.

He lay there, covered in Kakarot's blood, quietly sniffling and wondering exactly what happened when one of the attendants picked him up. Fearing the worst, he curled himself into a tight ball and whimpered.

"Calm down _Kakarot_, you're just being sent out on a mission." the man said as he walked off with him and carried him down the hall.

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Paragus watched the pod depart from the hangar out of the corner of his eye while he made sure not to overdo it while mourning over the body of the son of a third class warrior. He was being watched. If he slipped up even once they would swiftly realize his deception, and his son would be killed for real. King Vegeta seemed to think that he had given up too easily.

As he carried the body of the infant that had been killed in his son's place to somewhere where he would be properly disposed of, the world exploded around him and he knew no more until he reached the line at the gates of judgment.

Bardock's son Kakarot was sent off to terrorize the Heaven of the Murdered Innocents while he was dragged down to hell.

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Broly, having not received the programming given to all low-level infants before being sent out, had no idea what he was supposed to do. He had been sent halfway across the galaxy, only to be dumped on some strange world where everything was so light. The air was rather thick as well, and it was making him dizzy. Having crawled away from the pod shortly after it landed, he was lost and alone on a strange planet and it was getting cold.

He quietly started to cry. In the short while he was alive, his life had gone from bad to worse. As he was crying, an old man came out of the woods and stopped in front of him. He tried to stop crying, afraid that the old man would laugh at him as the nursery attendants had. Instead of laughing, the old man gently picked him up, held him close and started patting him on the back while making little shushing noises.

"How'd you get way out here little one?" The old man said as he held him out to inspect him. "Well, since you seem to be lost, I'll take care....well, I'll be...a tail!"

The man then chuckled, said something about calling him Goku, and carried him to his home humming a strange tune the entire time. Once they got inside the house, the old man set him in front of a cozy fire. Comfortable and exhausted, he fell asleep.

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Son Gohan stared down at the little baby he had found wandering the woods. Other than the furry brown tail, the boy appeared quite healthy. Why someone would abandon a child for such a minor defect, he didn't know. Children were gifts from heaven and should be treated accordingly. He would take care of the child since it seemed that his parents weren't willing to.

Looking around, he realized that he didn't have the things necessary for the care of a baby. He would have to take one of his rare trips into town to get the necessary supplies as well as a few toys for the child to play with. Until then, he would have to improvise. Fortunately, he still had the bottle from when he had cared for that injured fawn a couple of years ago. He could use a couple of dishcloths as diapers, and turn his spare blanket into some sort of hammock. It was a good thing his friend the Ox King had sent him that cow.

Taking in the mud, grass, and whatever that covered the boy, he realized that the first order of business when the child woke up would be a bath. He quickly got out his washbasin and began heating water.

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When Broly awoke, he was surprised to discover that the old man who had carried him home was quite willing to wait on him hand and foot. The way his life had been going, he was half expecting the old man to try to eat him or something.

First, the old man gave him a bath, removing all of the dirt and leaves that he had accumulated on his skin and in his hair during his wandering. Then the old man dried him off in front of the fire with a soft fluffy cloth, wrapped him in a strange garment and then wrapped him in a blanket. The old man then gave him a bottle of warm milk, gently rocked him until he was sleepy while humming the tune he had hummed on the way to his home, and set him down in a soft bed that rocked slightly.

The next morning, the old man carried him onto a flying machine that had appeared out of nowere and flew him to a strange and new location. When they got there, the man set him in a little sling that was tied across his back. While riding in the sling, he was able to take in a wide variety of strange new sights, smells and sounds. People wandered from building to building, going about on mysterious errands. An old person stood quietly in front of a dome shaped building moving a stick with several smaller sticks on it back and forth. Several smaller people ran around chasing a round red thing.

The people that wandered about this place all looked different. Some were big, some were small, some wide, and some narrow. Unlike the Saiyans who all had black and spiky hair unless it was cut or dyed, they came in a variety of hair colors and textures. None of them looked quite like the old man that was carrying him on his back. None were like HIS old man.

Eventually, his old man made his way into one of the buildings. It took a moment for him to adjust to the darkness, but when he did he saw a wide variety of strange and wondrous things. He wanted to go over and examine every last one of them.

"Best to get the whole lot all at once." his old man said as he went about the building grabbing a number of the things he had been looking at before taking them to a counter where he handed a green-furred alien with pointy ears and a pointy snout a bunch of small flat rectangular things and got several back in return along with some round metal discs.

His old man went to another building where he got several nearly identical outfits in a wide variety of sizes. He repeated the ritual from the previous building with the wide and bald human at the counter. Taking him to a strange room with a tile floor, several boxed in areas and a counter with several basins in it, his old man pulled one of the outfits out of one of the bags and promptly dressed him in it. It was too big.

"You'll grow into it little one, just like you'll grow into all of the rest." his old man said as he rolled up the sleeves of his new top and rolled up his pant legs. Before they left the room, the old man put all of the bags into the box that had appeared out of nowhere before, before it disappeared again.

At the end of the day, after going to a place where he was fed a bunch of strange and delicious food after he had taken some off of his old man's plate, his old man put him back in the flying machine that had once again appeared out of nowhere, and took him back to his house.

Over the next several days, he broke all of his new toys while he tried to play with them. His old man did his best to fix them, but they were never quite the same. They were never quite as fun or interesting.

On the night of the full moon, he turned away from the window and closed his eyes. He didn't want to break his Gohan.


	7. Part Two: The Beginning of the Hunt

Now that Son Goku has come to be, it is time to tell the tale of his first search for the Dragon Balls.

Beyond this page is the stories of the beginning of the quest each Son Goku made to summon the mighty Shenron.


	8. Wandering Prince

Son Goku - formerly Prince Vegeta of the Saiyans - now eleven and a half, sorted through the dusty objects in the shrine that was near the house out of boredom. He had spent the past few years healing, regaining his strength, and learning and adapting the new fighting style that Son Gohan had been teaching him. The best attack in this "Kame" style in his opinion was the energy attack called Kamehameha which could be scaled up or down depending on the amount of energy you wanted to expend and how much destruction you wished to cause. His Gallic Gun had simply been for more wide area destruction. The only reason he hadn't flown off long ago was because the old man always had one or two new tricks to teach him.

Today, because the old man had become ill recently, he was left to his own devices and had nothing to do. He had already read every book and magazine the old man had, including the ones with pictures of naked females that he kept hidden under his mattress for some strange reason. He had already hunted enough to eat his fill, and an entire lazy afternoon had stretched out before him.

He had spent only thirty minutes practicing with the strange pole Son Gohan had given him shortly after he arrived, before he grew bored of it. Having nothing else that he could think of doing, he wandered into the old shrine that Son Gohan used as storage space and started rooting through his belongings. This wasn't really polite, but he had nothing else to do. In a dusty corner, sitting on a faded purple velvet pillow was a translucent yellow ball with four red stars embedded in it. As he looked at it, it started to glow faintly. Curious, he picked it up and the glow grew brighter. Wondering what the object was, he carried it inside to ask the old man.

Coughing, and blowing his nose, the old man examined the object.

"This thing? It's a Dragon Ball. If you gather all seven of them, you can summon the dragon Shenron and he will grant you a wish." he said. "Once the wish is made, the Dragon Balls scatter all across the world and you have to wait at least a year before you can make another wish. The thing is, it usually takes several years, if not longer to find all seven."

"So the story about the man who wished for immortality..." he began. Why anyone would make such a pointless wish, he didn't know. Sure, the first thing that came to his mind when he thought about such a thing was an eternity of gaining strength and battling strong opponents, but what happened when all of the strong opponents died and he became too strong for anyone else to challenge him? How many eons of empty time would he have on his hands waiting for another opponent to evolve? Would he still be stuck alive after the universe itself ended?

Looking at the ball, such considerations made him shudder at the thought of such a wish. There were so many ways any number of wishes could go wrong. The ball was far more dangerous than it first appeared. Still, the thought of getting a wish - any wish he could think of - granted appealed to him.

&!&!&!&

Son Gohan watched as the boy turned the ball in his hands considering the consequences of any number of wishes. The child he had taken in three years earlier had learned to think his actions through after nearly being killed before he had come here. He didn't know who had nearly killed him or why, as he was generally closemouthed about his past.

The boy who was rapidly approaching adolescence, and had been rather restless lately had swiftly learned everything that he could teach him after he went through two years of rather grueling physical therapy to bring his strength and mobility back. Children with nothing to do tended to cause mischief, and he wasn't entirely certain he - or the rest of the world for that matter - could survive the mischief this child could cause. Trying to gather all of the Dragon Balls was a futile task. While in theory you could get a wish a year, the shortest amount of time it had taken to gather all seven of the balls had been three generations. Chances were that he would either come back in a couple of years after having given up, or he would make his own way in the world and settle somewhere where he was happy. While he would miss the boy, it would be good for him to try his hand at an impossible task or two before adulthood and its responsibilities held him in its iron grip.

"Why don't you gather the Dragon Balls?" he said. "It'll give you something to do, since you're so bored around here. Tell you what, to make it more of a challenge, why don't you do it without flying the entire time you are searching."

Seeing the way the boy's eyes brightened when he said this, he knew he had made the right decision. The boy barely took the time to say goodbye before he grabbed his staff, some food, and two spare outfits and raced out the door.

&!&!&!&

Goku learned exactly how big a place a planet could be when you were searching for a few spheres that were each the size of an orange. During the eight years since he had left Son Gohan, he had found only two more of the balls. One of them had been in the possession of Muten Roshi, the master of the Turtle School of Martial arts and former teacher of Son Gohan which he had earned in a one-on-one fight where his main concern had been not killing the man. There was no point in killing those who couldn't adequately fight back if you didn't need to, and he wasn't going to waste his time doing so. He ended up picking up a few new tricks and techniques during the fight as well.

The other ball had been in the depths of an evergreen forest. Some diminutive blue skinned, pointy earred freak that had been accompanied by a dog and a woman wearing red eye-makeup swore revenge when he snatched the ball out of his hands. He'd like to see the pipsqueak try.

In the entire eight years he never came across an opponent who could challenge him in strength but, he learned many new things including another two styles of Martial Arts. He saw more of the world than most of it's inhabitants ever saw in a lifetime, both the beautiful and the ugly. He wandered through forests, jungles, deserts, mountain ranges, and cities. He swam through lakes, rivers and oceans. He climbed to the top of a really tall tower and back down again. He tasted exotic dishes such as, kung pao chicken, curry, sushi, Senzu beans, hamburgers, falafel, and pizza as well as hunted game he had never tasted the like of on any of the missions he had been sent on by Frieza.

It was on the morning of the first day of the ninth year of his search when he came across the blue haired female, or rather she came across him. She had been riding a motorcycle, and had stopped along the stretch of road that was nearest the tree he was resting against. She consulted the round device she was holding, and then walked straight towards him. As she approached, he studied her further and noticed she was rather pretty in a girlish kind of way. Once she matured a bit more, she would be stunning.

The girl had been searching for her second Dragon Ball when she had spotted the cluster of three on her radar, and that was how she had found him. He could've easily overpowered her and taken her ball and the device, but that would be a rather rude and boorish thing to do to a female and besides if she was intelligent enough to design the thing she would be intelligent enough to design a self destruct in case it left her control, and he would be back to searching the hard way with very little gained from the event. If he traveled with her, the search that had been growing rather tedious as of late would be over in a matter of days or weeks rather than in who knew how many more years.

An hour later, he was back on the road. This time he was traveling with the girl who was a bit less than four years younger than him. Her name was Bulma Briefs, she had just turned sixteen and she was searching for the Dragon Balls on her Summer vacation. She was - as he had suspected - the inventor of what she called the Dragon Radar which enabled her to find the balls far more quickly than he could. He knew that she was planning on cheating him out of his wish when all of the balls were gathered, but he would deal with it later.


	9. Child of the Forest

A boy who had once been named Krillin, but was now named Goku had been living in his mountain home for over six years when the girl had come visiting and asked Grandpa Gohan for his dragon ball. Those six years had been very kind to him, and the bullies at the Orinji temple became a vague memory.

Over the six years and someodd months he'd lived with his adoptive grandfather, he'd learned a great deal about woodcraft as well as martial arts. He could track just about anything he could think of through the woods surrounding his home, as well as set snares, hunt, and fish. He had come to love the forest and would often spend days wandering its labyrinthine depths before going home. It had been on a day that he'd been returning from one of his frequent camping trips that the blue haired teenager named Bulma had arrived.

He had felt somewhat apprehensive when his grandfather had introduced him to the girl. She was the first human he had seen besides his grandfather in a couple years. His grandfather enjoyed the isolation of the mountains and the solitude they provided, and rarely went into town. The last time they had been to a village had been to get some new clothes for him after he'd worn out the old ones since he was still much too small to wear Son Gohan's hand-me-downs. The sheer number of people had almost overwhelmed him, as he had grown accustomed to the solitude as well. He had always been shy when he was younger, but it had gotten ten times worse.

"Young Bulma here is on a quest to gather these Dragon Balls." Grandfather said as he held up the four star ball he kept in the small shrine on the property.

That sounded somewhat fascinating to him. He had heard stories of heroic quests throughout his childhood and had dreamed of going on one when he was younger. Sometimes when he was in the forest, he still pretended that he was a traveler exploring a distant land.

"I was thinking that you could go with her." Grandpa said. "No woman should travel alone, especially in the wilderness, and keeping you isolated here is probably doing more harm than good."

The next morning, Goku found himself waving goodbye to his grandfather from the back of a motorcycle, excited about what the coming days would bring. He was finally going on a quest of his own, much like the ones his Grandpa had gone on during his youth. He would have stories to tell his own grandchildren one day. Hopefully, he would be the hero of them all as well.


	10. The Thief and the Warrior

Son Goku - a small boy with spiky black hair that stuck up in every direction, a furry brown tail, and a scar on his cheek that he had had for as long as he could remember - had stayed on the mountain after the accident that caused his grandfather's death. Every day, he regretted the fact that he had lost control during his transformation and crushed Son Gohan to death. If he went anywhere populated, there was a chance of that happening again and many more people could be killed. Besides, there was no need to leave the mountains. He had all of the food he needed right here as long as he was willing to go out and hunt for it.

For the past four years, he had spent his mornings hunting and fishing, his afternoons cooking and dealing with any necessary chores, and his evenings studying what little literature had survived the destruction of the house. He still couldn't figure why the magazines his grandfather had kept hidden in the back of his closet were supposed to be interesting. Perhaps it was because the people in it had parts that he and his grandfather didn't have. He guessed these were the mysterious girls his grandfather had spoken of.

One day, his routine was broken when what he presumed was a girl had started poking around the property. It had lumps on its chest like the girls in Grandpa Gohan's old magazines but, it was wearing clothes, so he couldn't tell. Rather than do the polite thing and knock at the house that he'd mostly rebuilt after the accident despite the fact that he wasn't much of a carpenter, the girl wandered into Grandpa's old storage shed.

"Excuse me," he said when he snuck up behind the girl who looked like she was about to make off with one of the treasures his grandfather had collected during his travels long before he had adopted him. "But what exactly do you think you're doing?"

The girl - at least he was reasonably certain it was a girl - jumped in surprise and whirled around.

"I-I was, um..." the girl said, at least having the decency to look guilty. Whether that was over the theft or the fact that she had been caught was yet to be determined.

The girl finally launched into a story about exactly what the orb his grandfather had found to be important was, and why she had tried to steal it. It sounded interesting, and part of him wanted to go with her, but...

When the girl had said that the quest should be over in a couple of weeks, he was sold. There was still nearly a month until the next full moon. He would have time to see some of the world he'd heard stories about and get back home, or at the very least find somewhere that was completely isolated before then.

When one Bulma Briefs departed with the Four Star Dragon Ball, a certain spiky haired "twelve year old" went with her.


	11. A Slightly Different World

In some places, history diverges wildly before it can get on something approaching back on track. When Bulma Briefs came by looking for the four star Dragon Ball, she met Son Gohan who had been living by himself. Thinking that it would be a nice vacation, Gohan had joined her on her quest. Many of the same things happened as would have happened if Son Goku was on this quest. Gohan is the one who drags Turtle back to the ocean, knowing who he is, and claims Roshi's dragon ball as payment instead of Kinto'un which he can no longer ride. He easily defeats Oolong when he comes back to the village for the girl, and offers to take Yamcha on as a student. Later, it is his Kamehameha that destroys the fire in the Ox King's home rather than Roshi's, so Oolong - whom Gohan finds rather amusing - is spared the indignity of the Puff Puff incident.

It is in Pilaf's lair that things became radically different. Though Gohan finally managed to knock down the wall with a Kamehameha despite the fact that he was nearly entirely drained, he hadn't managed to do it in time to prevent Pilaf from making his wish. Pilaf became the Emperor of the world. A year and ten months later, the Red Ribbon Army managed to gather it's forces under the leadership of Staff Officer Black who had assassinated Commander Red for wasting a wish on becoming taller. The Red Ribbon Army engaged in a two year long Civil war with Emperor Pilaf's forces.

Tienshinhan had quite easily won the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai without Goku there to challenge him, thus proving the might of the Crane School. It was during this tournament that Emperor Pilaf released the Demon King Piccolo from his confinement in the electric rice cooker in a last ditch effort to defeat Commander Black's forces. Piccolo turned on Emperor Pilaf and decimated his remaining forces before destroying the Red Ribbon Army as well. After destroying both armies, he acquired the Tenkaichi Budokai competition roster in order to destroy all fighters that might have even the smallest chance of defeating him.

Less than a day after his release, Piccolo acquired a Dragon Ball in order to prevent anyone else from gathering them all and wishing his destruction. He saw no point in destroying Shenron as he knew that he may want to make wishes in the future.

When Kamesenin and Tsurusenin both learned that Piccolo had once more been turned loose on the world, they called a truce and joined forces to deal with the threat he presented. The Crane Hermit and his brother Tao Pai Pai sacrificed themselves during the battle leaving Tienshinhan and Chaotzu alone in the world. The Turtle Hermit would later take them in, and Tienshinhan would abandon his dream of becoming an assassin.

The Crane Hermit died casting a Mafuba that Piccolo managed to avoid but, did manage to trap one of his offspring. Tao Pai Pai then sacrificed himself, using the Kikoho technique to defeat Piccolo who managed to send his egg out into the world before what little of him was left exploded. For their brave acts, King Yemma granted them reincarnation rather than sending them straight to hell.

In the time that Son Gohan was following the young Piccolo who is now Son Goku around, the former Emperor whom Pilaf's wish dethroned came back into power and started the process of reconstruction. He declared the day of Piccolo's death a holiday, and commissioned a statue honoring the Crane Hermit and Tao Pai Pai for their noble sacrafice.

It had been into this world that young Piccolo who now had the name Son Goku had been brought along on a quest to retrieve the Dragon Balls in the hopes that Shenron would be able to bring back at least some of the dead, after he had recovered from his injuries.


End file.
